AS THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR OF 1861-1865 ground
on into 1864 there was continuing pressure
within both the North and the South to negotiate
some kind of peace settlement. There were
factions within both governments that were
adamant that peace negotiations should be
pursued at any cost.
There were
such peace
overtures early
in the conflict,
but the “Peace
Commission” of
1861 obviously
failed.
Confederate
Vice-President
Alexander
Stephens
mentioned in his
post-war account
that there was a
proposed peace
conference in
1863, which did
not materialize.
Critics on both
sides maintained
that the enemy
did not want
peace. This was
obviously not
true. But, on
the Confederate
side, the
majority of
representatives
in the House and Senate
maintained that they were fighting for their
independence and that independence would not be
compromised. Nevertheless, the peace resolutions
made public by the Confederate House of
Representatives show that the Confederacy did
desire peace.
Assembled
here are
documents from
two sources: one
is the set of
six peace resolutions printed by the Confederate
House of Representatives that are part of the
Confederate imprints in the Rosanna Blake
Collection at Marshall University (Parrish &
Willingham numbers: 745, 746, 747, 750, 788 and
817). The other consists of excerpts from
the Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America,
1861-1865, published by the U.S. Government Printing
Office in 1905, giving a chronology of events in
the Confederate
Congress.

EVENTS
IN THE CONFEDERATE CONGRESS ABOUT THE
HAMPTON ROADS PEACE CONFERENCE